A DEATH ON 66

Why would two-bit car thief Jimmy Wilburn, just paroled from an Oklahoma jail, high-tail it back to the Flying Tiger Club, inches away from where he was last picked up—just in time to end up dead in the Tiger dumpster? He must have been looking for the stash from some job so secret it doesn't appear on any police blotter. So Taggart Roper (The Next Victim, 1993), whom Tiger owner Hondo Loomis had brought in (rather irrelevantly) to make sure the latest round of threats and vandalism against the club weren't being sponsored by Tulsa racketeer Freddie Manzano, stays on to head up the treasure hunt—and to keep one-armed former cult-rocker Loomis a step ahead of Manzano, who takes a proprietary interest in the money, and an ex-CIA cowboy who likes to lean on people. A tidy double swallow that goes down as smooth and easy as a shot of Jim Beam.